2023 Volkswagen Golf 110TSI R-Line review

Imagine this nightmare scenario. You’d missed the launch of the Mark 8 Golf and you roll into your local Volkswagen dealer with the cash for a Golf GTI. Who doesn’t want a Golf GTI? Hardy anyone. You’re pleased with yourself scraping together the forty-plus grand, and a few seconds into your visit you discover that the GTI is way out of your league, financially speaking.

VW’s product planners have envisaged something very similar, and like so many other car companies have realised the power of sporty branding on a car that isn’t that sporty. M Sport, AMG packs, S Line, N Line, the list goes on. Volkswagen’s R is emblematic of its sportiest variants (despite Golf being the king of the GTI badge), and so a carefully constructed R-Line pack will cater to those who can’t – or won’t – make the financial leap to GTI.

The R-Line is the third and final car in the mainstream Golf line-up before things get spicy with the Golf GTI and spicier again with the Golf R. At $41,690 before on-road costs, it has busted through the $40K mark in recent years; the kind of money that used to get you a Golf GTI.

The Golf isn’t alone, of course, but where it used to really punch on with Korean and Japanese marques, as with the Polo, VW has thrown its lot in with the higher end of the ever-shrinking hatchback market.

The R-Line ships with 18-inch alloy wheels, keyless entry and start, 'performance' LED headlights, adaptive cruise control, reversing camera, front and rear parking sensors, three-zone climate control, 10-inch media touchscreen, satellite navigation, wireless phone charging and a space-saver spare.

R-Line adds a styling pack inside and out, a very nice pair of bucket-style front seats, driving mode selection, and some frippery – like 30 colour choices for the ambient cabin lighting.

The spec is largely based on the Golf Life, with a few more sporty-biased additions, but it also has suspension tweaks to make it more fun to drive. This car had the optional Sound & Vision package, but you can also add a panoramic sunroof and choose paint choices of varying costs.

Let’s start with the most disappointing part of the hatchback experience, at least in this segment – boot space. The Golf acquits itself well with 374 litres of space in an uncluttered space that’s easy to load. When you drop the 60/40 split fold, you have 1230L, which is also respectable and will cope with moderate Swedish flat-pack purchases. Sorry.

Into the back seat and it’s not bad, at least for 180cm me behind my driving position. The fabric trim seems pretty hardy and the seat itself is comfortable. The big rear windows let in lots of light and you get an armrest with two cupholders, two USB-C ports and bottle holders in the doors. Given plenty of hatchbacks don’t even have an armrest, this isn’t bad going, but then again it is a forty-grand-plus car.

The Golf and Golf Life’s seats get chucked when you tick the R-Line box, replaced with R-style seats that look great and are mighty comfortable. They hold you in nicely and only really tall or wide folks may not like them; the former for a lack of adjustable headrest, and the latter for snug bolstering.

Volkswagen’s toggle-style gear shifter means the console is fairly spacious for the two cupholders and the wireless charging pad is easy to get to. You never have to negotiate a traditional shifter, which can sometimes involve a bit of 'wristobatics'. The bottle holders in the doors are pretty hefty and the centre console bin with armrest on top is also handily sized. 

It’s a great view out from the driver’s seat, and there’s really only the thick C-pillar to contend with. Despite the large size of the touchscreen, it doesn’t dominate the space. The fact that so many controls are swept up into the software means that there are few buttons, which is something car companies seem to be leaning towards. As ever, the cabin materials are mostly pretty good, and verging on plush in some cases.

Like a lot of VW Group cars, the Golf’s media system includes wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, a feature on the Golf Life and higher. The system on the Golf is quite a bit better than the older system and was more adept at holding the CarPlay connection.

The DAB+ selection screen is comprehensible, which makes a nice change, plus there's AM/FM and standard Bluetooth streaming. There’s also an in-built sat-nav that talks to both the digital instrument cluster and the optional head-up display.

It’s also, happily, a big 10-inch screen that is mostly easy to use. Except so many of the functions are jammed into the screen that you have faff about to change the climate control more than you’d like. Plenty of cars are like this and it’s annoying. Peugeot’s second-generation 308 had almost no physical controls, but the interior designers quickly saw the light for the 3008 and the rest of the range by adding them back.

The software system is quite simple to navigate when you are sitting still and not on the road, though, with lots of colour options to suit your mood.

In addition to the standard digital dash, this car had the Sound & Vision package that adds a very comprehensive head-up display and a nine-speaker, 480-watt Harmon Kardon-branded system. Is it worth $1600? Probably not, but the head-up display is great.

The Golf was originally tested in 2019, but Volkswagen's recent safety upgrades saw it assessed to 2022 safety criteria whilst maintaining a five-star ANCAP rating. This rating applies to all updated variants built from November 2022 and on sale from February 2023.

It scored well with 88 per cent for adult occupant protection, 87 per cent for child protection, 74 per cent for vulnerable road user protection, and 76 per cent for safety assist systems.

The Golf’s safety list scored a minor bump in 2023 with the addition of a ninth airbag – a front centre airbag to help prevent head clashes in a side impact. That goes with the usual front, front side and curtain airbags, as well as rear side airbags.

You also get the usual ABS, stability and traction controls, lane-centring, lane-keep assist, blind-spot monitoring, rear cross-traffic alert, passenger protection system, reversing camera, driver attention detection, safe exit warning, forward AEB, rear cross-traffic alert and auto high beams.

The semi-autonomous Travel Assist is well-calibrated for the most part, and polite rather than pushy. But it wasn’t too clever when it came to working out that you had your hands on the steering wheel, as you had to keep nudging it to remind it you were there.

Volkswagen offers a five-year/unlimited kilometre warranty on its range, which is in line with just about everyone now.

You can pay as you go for servicing and over three services pay $1751 or $3356 over five years, both on the high side as the segment goes. You can save a chunk by pre-paying, with three years dropping to $1550 and five years to $2650, which is a pretty healthy saving over pay as you go. More than $500 per service is still a bit stiff, but here we are.

Annual insurance costs came out at $1680 based on a comparative quote for a 35-year-old male driver living in Chatswood, NSW. Insurance estimates may vary based on your location, driving history, and personal circumstances.

We had a small miss on the Golf’s claimed 5.8L/100km fuel figure, managing 7.2L/100km in what was, to be fair to the Golf, mostly city and suburban-bound driving, so I can’t see any reason the figure won’t improve with a mix of highway and city.

Even so, you’ll go almost 700km between fills of 95-octane even with that figure.

Let’s get this straight – despite the R badges adorning the grille and rump, this isn’t a particularly hardcore warm hatch. Heck, it’s not even as focussed as the GTI, which these days can be absurdly comfortable in Comfort mode.

The suspension tweaks are, however, useful. Running on larger 18-inch wheels means the ride is a little firmer, but it doesn’t seem any noisier than the Life I drove not long after this Golf launched. The usual complaints on concrete or coarse surfaces apply, but there’s a fair bit of rubber underneath the R-Line, so they are to be expected.

I always get a little too excited about driving a hatchback because so many of the cars I drive are not that, with SUVs dominating our market. The Golf feels so light on its feet, my wife and I grinned the whole time we had it, and it was the car we each suggested we take for any given solo trip. I guess it’s the kind of car we had in our youth, not needing a decent shove on the accelerator to get moving, and generally being a really nice place to be without all that weight underneath you.

The steering is well-weighted and, in the R-Line, has a progressive rack, meaning less lock is required to fire into a corner than is needed in the basic car. It also means you don’t always have that responsiveness when you don’t want it. This feature is also shared with the GTI, if you were wondering. Even the steering wheel itself is the right size.

And so we come to the 1.4-litre turbo petrol four VW is so fond of. So fond you can find it in a Tiguan Allspace, where it does a pretty good job of hauling a seven-seat SUV. The substantially lighter Golf is more fleet of foot as a result, the 110kW and 250Nm picking up pretty quickly.

Driving the front wheels, the Golf R-Line does not have the familiar six or seven-speed twin-clutch transmissions found in other Volkswagen applications, but instead an eight-speed torque converter. So no more rolling back and a lot less indecisiveness at parking speeds, particularly compared to the seven-speed.

If you’re not fussed about the sportier suspension or the nicer seats, the R-Line probably isn’t worth the extra over a Golf Life because there isn’t much that is substantial apart from these things. But if you like a car with a bit more intent than the already tidily handling Golf Life, it’s worth it. And let’s face it, you’re probably buying a hatchback because you don’t want a high-riding SUV, so you may as well lean into it.

If you need more space in the boot, it’s kind of annoying you can’t get the wagon in R-Line (or screaming R) anymore.

If the Golf is the car for you, start with the Volkswagen website and its stock locator. Both the website and a Volkswagen Australia spokesperson confirm that there is plenty of stock available across the entire Golf range, so if the R-Line is a bit rich for your tastes, the Golf 110TSI Life is around in good numbers.

I quite liked the R-Line and it’s the car for me, but for less emotional buyers, the Life is the sweet spot, with most of the good stuff of the R-Line but in an even more comfortable package.

When you’re ready to buy, you can check out Drive.com.au/cars-for-sale or head over to the VW website or dealer. If you’re a bit on the tall or wide side, make sure you fit comfortably in the R-Line seats. And don’t let a dealer wave away these concerns, because if you don’t like the front seats, ownership is going to be a real grind.